


Plan C

by gladdecease



Category: Naruto
Genre: Collection: Purimgifts Day 2, Fuuinjutsu, Gen, Rescue Missions, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-21
Updated: 2019-03-21
Packaged: 2019-11-18 21:02:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18126461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gladdecease/pseuds/gladdecease
Summary: Tenten got the bad news just as she was entering the second hour of her early morning training.





	Plan C

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Annapods](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annapods/gifts).



> Happy Purim, Annapods! Your letter's references to time travel, fix-its, and side characters made a light bulb turn on in the back of my head, where old plot bunnies go to die. I hope you enjoy this small piece of a far larger story about kunoichi getting to go back in time and save the world. :)

Tenten got the bad news just as she was entering her second hour of early morning training - thankfully, while she was retrieving her far-flung weapons, and not while she was throwing them at a spinning top of chakra named Hyuuga Neji.

«We’re moving to Plan C,» Ino’s voice said, echoing slightly in the back of Tenten's head. She pretended to search through some scrub on the edge of the grounds for one of her favorite shortswords so she could listen more carefully. «The curse-sealed Sound-nin interfered when Sakura seemed to be getting through to Sasuke-kun, and she couldn’t defeat them without revealing herself. We don't know what happened after that, but he's gone. Until we know otherwise, assume he went willingly.»

 _Roger that_ , Tenten thought, though she had a feeling Ino couldn't hear thoughts over this kind of distance without tech support. She ‘found’ the shortsword and triggered the reverse seal that would send it back to its place in her Bigger Now Sealing Scrolls, frowning thoughtfully. ‘Gone willingly’ was one of the likelier outcomes at this stage, though Sakura had been hopeful that she could convince Sasuke to, if not stay, at least hear her out for long enough that someone, _anyone_ special jounin rank or higher, might notice and step in. Since it had been likely, it had been the outcome Tenten had prepared for most, but the seals she’d made were back at home.

“Hey, Neji,” she said as she activated a mass recall seal, taking care of all the weaponry she’d let loose this morning at once. He was glistening but not out of breath, in that unfair genius/massive-stamina-having way of his. Plan C allowed for about half an hour to get the team together... long enough that he’d be mission ready, she judged. “Sorry about this, but I need to head home, I just remembered a chore I need to take care of before lunchtime. Meet up again at two?”

Neji gave her an odd look - it wasn’t her best excuse, Tenten wasn’t usually one for forgetting about her chores - but nodded, and started one of his cooldown exercises.

Tenten took stock of herself. Yeah, she would probably benefit from a cooldown herself, but was there _time?_ Would it seem odd to Neji if she skipped it? She didn’t remember how stubborn she’d been about following Guy-sensei’s instructions at this age. Probably with Guy-sensei and Lee both absent, she could get away with it… and she really did need to get the first half of the transportation seal to Ino as soon as possible. They were going to hit the point of no return soon, but the fewer delays they faced along the way the better.

And so, with a friendly wave goodbye Tenten strapped her scrolls into their pouch and dashed off.

* * *

She got home just in time - Tenten had barely sat down before there was a knock at her window. She flicked the switches to deactivate her traps and slid the screen aside to reveal Ino, looking a little washed out in her new forest green flak jacket. Or maybe she was just tired. Tenten couldn’t imagine how exhausting it must be to coordinate all of this subterfuge without anyone catching on; being on the edge of it was hard enough.

“Tenten-san,” Ino said.

“Hang on,” Tenten said. “I just got back from morning training with Neji, I haven’t had time to get the seal out of storage yet.” She ducked under her bed to open up the pocket dimension seal she’d put there the day after the preliminaries, and removed two nearly identical seals - stored in sealing scrolls for now, of course. The actual seals were nearly ten feet square, they couldn’t be taken as-is into the field. It had been a pain to get all the supplies she needed to make the seals and scrolls, not to mention the design references, but the usual magic words - “Should I get my sensei?” - had worked just fine.

As she stood, she sensed a tension in the air behind her. She turned around.

Two feet to Ino’s left, just out of sight from Tenten's chair, Shikamaru sighed. “This girl _too?_ ”

...well, at least she hadn’t _totally_ messed up, if he was sounding this resigned about it. Tenten stuck out her tongue sheepishly. “Oops,” she said, handing over the scroll.

“It’s alright,” Ino sighed. “I had to partially read him in after our fight in the exam finals, what’s one more detail?” She inspected the scroll carefully. “One person at each cardinal point, right?”

“Right.” Tenten pointed at Ino for emphasis, saying, “The person at the north point _has_ to know what they’re doing; everyone else just supplies chakra.”

“I don’t know what we’d do without you, Tenten-san,” Ino said gratefully, pocketing it.

“You’d be taking the long way home,” Tenten said with a grin. “Now,” she said, flipping the second scroll into the air, “you didn't say earlier, are we going with the hospital as exit-point, or an interrogation cell?”

Ino bit her lip. “I _want_ to say hospital, but Sakura hasn’t made as much headway with Tsunade-sama as we'd hoped, and I had to read my dad in after the preliminaries, so...”

“Got it,” Tenten said, pleased. An interrogation cell had been her preference to begin with. “Then I’ll see you tomorrow, if not sooner.”

Ino gave Tenten an uncertain smile. “Hopefully.”

“Hey, where’s that confidence that got us here in the first place? Where’s that _we’re doing it better this time_ spirit?!” Tenten gave her a thumbs up, grinning a lower-wattage version of her sensei’s classic smile. “Have faith!”

Ino smiled; behind her, Shikamaru nodded. “Right.”

And then they were off, and Tenten was left to figure out a way to walk into ANBU HQ as a genin and demand an audience with the head of Intelligence… _inconspicuously_.

Well, she wasn’t the best infiltrator on Team Guy for nothing.

**Author's Note:**

> 


End file.
